About the book
The Ripening Sun plugs directly into the fascination for books by inspirational women who have dared to live their dream, such as Extra Virgin and The Olive Farm. An inspiring autobiography, set in romantic France, to be enjoyed by fans of wine and success stories worldwide. (20030402)
Product Description
For most people giving up the day job and moving to a beautiful area of France and living off the vines is an impossible but delicious dream. In 1990, Patricia Atkinson and her husband decided to sell up in Britain and emigrate to the Dordogne. Their idea was to buy a house with a few vines attached and employ someone to tend to the wine while they earned their living with some financial consultancy work. There followed a series of disasters: the stock market crashed leaving their small holding as their sole source of income; the first red wine harvest turned to vinegar; and Patricia’s husband returned to Britain, unable to cope with the stress. He never returned. Patricia Atkinson, whose only knowledge of wine up to that moment was ‘that it came from a bottle’ and who had not a word of French, was left to salvage their life savings form the vineyards. What follows is a remarkable story of struggle and transformation whereby her tiny 4 hectare plot has become a major estate of 21 hectares, where her Clos d’Yvigne wines have won awards and been adopted by wine merchants throughout the world and where she has been hailed as a superstar by UK wine writers.

About the Author
Patricia Atkinson has already been the subject of a Channel 4 documentary and there is further TV interest in bringing her life up to date. She has featured in interviews in The Times, The Observer and the Evening Standard, and on Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time.

Well the time has flown by and its actually time to head off to France for a weeks house hunting, Kev is sat next to me finishing off the google map of our rout for each days house hunting.

Barnaby Pickles is moping around the house and giving us those big brown eyed glances which says he knows somethings up and its time for his holidays to Dasa and Dione’s.

We were hoping that the weather in France would be much better than here and we would get a glance of spring sunshine, but alas its looks likes its going to be raining most of the time but 10 or so degrees warmer than here so thats something.

We have over 20 houses to see in five days, i think my mind will be frazzled by house number 10. Kev’s mum and boyfriend are joining us from Thursday night to see our pick of the best and our favourite from our first visit number 12 on our map.

Wish us luck, hopefully we will have some great news for you next week.

Our house went on the market exactly a week ago today and we were a little bit nervous about what interest and reaction we would get. As you know we had over 11 viewings on the Monday night and a further 6 on Tuesday and had another 20 lined up for the rest of the week. But Monday night we had received 6 offers 3 for asking price the rest over the asking price and on Tuesday all the interested parties were asked to have their final and best offers in to the estate agent by 5pm. On Wednesday morning we accepted an offer for 6% over the asking price, OMG we never expected that in fact when kev and i first talked about selling we thought we may get £380,000,00 max.

We have to thank our amazing estate agents, they got us and our house, took fab photos and gave it a wonderful right up. If anyone is thinking of selling a property in South London we can highly recommend Wooster and Stock www.woosterstock.co.uk.

Wow, we had our first viewings tonight and what started out as 3 appointments ended up as 12, so many Kev, Lynda and Barnaby and I had to decamp to the pub.
Amazing comments from people and the agent says we should get at least 3 asking price offers tomorrow. Lets see, I’ll let you know.

Yesterday was a very exciting but scary day for us, as our London home for the last 5 years went on the market.

We have been deliberating over which estate agents to put it on with for ages, and finally decided to go with Wooster and Stock. A few things convinced us that they were the right one to go with, firstly they greet you like human beings and not a product on a conveyer belt, secondly their offices are stunning full of reclaimed furniture and unusual objects, just like our home. We love their new office in Sydenham which is a converted pub. They came to us last Thursday to take photos, do the energy rating and generally have a chat about the house and us, and I have to say I was extremely impressed, they were just ordinary people who all seem to love heir jobs and took a real interest in our house and us.
We love the way Paul the photographer has managed to capture the Essenes of the house on camera and love, love, love his quirky magazine style editorial.

So far so good now all they have to do is sell it for us, fingers crossed.